


while(true)

by whalebone



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Hand & Finger Kink, Hopeful Ending, Kissing, M/M, Robot/Human Relationships, injury aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25409830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalebone/pseuds/whalebone
Summary: The truth was, Cassian didn’t know why he had kissed K-2SO the first time.Five kisses.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/K-2SO
Comments: 27
Kudos: 74
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	while(true)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nununununu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/gifts).



while(true)  
{  
show(“love”)  
}

* * *

**=1**

The truth was, Cassian didn’t know why he had kissed K-2SO the first time. 

It was an unnerving thought. He had spent years engineering his iron-clad self-control. He could even regulate his heart rate where necessary. He could fight the effects of seventy-eight different types of drug, could fall easily into any of his different personas at a moment’s notice. He knew his own body and responses down to the smallest detail. But he didn’t know why he’d chosen that moment to finally give in and kiss K-2SO.

If it had been a dangerous situation, he could perhaps have explained it. If they had just escaped a firefight, or almost been blown up, emotions and adrenaline running high… that would have been a decent enough explanation. Cassian had fought his stupid, painful longing for months (maybe more than months), so it should have taken something huge to finally force him into action.

Instead it had been a joke.

They had been holed up in Cassian’s quarters on Base One, going over and over the blueprints of the Imperial station they were planning to infiltrate. 

“Who designed this thing?” Cassian had muttered, once again failing to locate the optimal route from the hangar to the security centre.

“I have no idea,” said K-2. “Presumably the same person who considers it unreasonable to include safety railings in their designs.” 

“Why _does_ the Empire hate safety railings?” 

“Don’t ask me,” K-2 complained. “It is ludicrous and illogical. They should have built me with grappling hooks.”

And, somehow, that was the funniest thing Cassian had heard in weeks. He started laughing, and once he started he was unable to stop. Soon his stomach was aching and his eyes burned with tears, and K-2 was saying, “Cassian, have you ingested something unusual? Do I need to alert medical?” 

Cassian just clutched at his stomach and leaned against the droid, who took hold of his arm and tilted his long neck to gaze down at him. Even in his fit of hysteria, Cassian recognised the light in K-2’s eyes as one of concern.

It was strange, how Cassian could tell that. As though he had developed his own behaviour models to analyse. 

“Are you alright?” K-2 asked. “This is not a typical response from you.”

“I’m fine,” Cassian managed to say, trying to force his face into a more sober expression, though his lips kept twisting into a smile. Kay, seemingly baffled by the presence of the smile, touched two fingertips to Cassian’s cheek.

Cassian met Kay’s glowing optics, his stomach aching, his chest full of a strangely bright, warm feeling. He turned his head and, before he really recognised what he was doing, brushed his lips against Kay’s fingers.

Kay pulled his hand back slightly, his optics moving from Cassian’s face to his own hand and then back again, lenses clicking. Cassian’s heart began to race, and he didn’t even try to control it. He knew, in some distant part of his mind, that he should panic. That he should draw away, apologise, put all his barriers back up. But somehow, after all his twisted, aching longing, it had been… easy.

How was it that this, of all things, was easy? Cassian wasn’t allowed easy things. 

“That is also not a typical response,” said Kay, and there was a fuzz of static around the edge of his words. His hand was still raised, fingers lightly curled, as though stuck between two movement commands.

“No,” agreed Cassian.

“It was interesting. I gathered some new data on you.” K-2’s fingers twitched forward slightly. “Would you repeat the experiment? I would like to learn more.”

Later, Cassian wondered if he could have said no. It would have been closing the barn door after the fathier had bolted, though. 

He looked at Kay’s fingers, and then met his gaze. Licked his lips, his heart hammering in his chest. “You need to repeat it for accurate results, right?”

“Precisely.”

It was some weeks after what Cassian thought of as their first kiss that K-2 asked him why he had done it. He asked the question with a light curiosity, though Cassian suspected that he was running into some frustrating gaps in his behaviour algorithms.

He considered his answer, watching Kay reach across their ship’s control panel to adjust their grav controls. 

“You made me laugh,” he said eventually.

“Oh.” Kay sounded puzzled by this. “Is that a good reason?”

Cassian caught his hand when he went to draw it back to the control column and pressed a swift kiss to his knuckles. “Good enough for me.”

* * *

**=2**

"I have a question." 

Cassian only just refrained from sighing. K-2 seemed incapable of just enjoying a comfortable silence. He tilted his head back against the droid's chest to try and meet his eyes.

"What is it?"

One of Kay's fans whirred a little, the way it did when he was uncertain about something. His fingers shifted slightly against Cassian's ribs. 

"Kay?"

"Does it bother you that we will never be able to kiss properly? Since I am unequipped with anything like an organic mouth."

Whatever Cassian had been expecting, it wasn't that. K-2 had an extremely healthy self-regard, and could expound at length on the superiority of synthetic beings over organic ones. It was unlike him to worry about something like this. 

Cassian frowned, twisting a little in K-2's arms to try and look at him. "Of course not." It was mostly true. Intimacy with a non-organic being had been something of a learning curve.

"Because according to my data, many organics place an extremely high importance on kissing as a form of affection and intimacy. Some 73% place as much, or more, importance on kissing than on sexual activity."

Talking about sex with K-2 was still a little weird, even as it sent a tiny thrill through Cassian's stomach. "I'm not most organics," he pointed out, turning around fully and sitting up on his knees. K-2 settled his hands at Cassian's waist and regarded him, head tilted thoughtfully.

"That's true," the droid allowed. His thumb swept a small curve against Cassian's stomach.

"Anyway, who said we couldn't kiss?" Cassian leaned up a little and pressed his lips to K-2's faceplate, over his vocoder grill. "Just because it doesn't look like what other people think." 

He settled back onto his heels and took one of Kay's hands in both of his, cradling the metal palm, the long, durasteel fingers. Lifted it to his mouth and kissed the tip of one finger. Then the next, very softly. KX units had extremely delicate sensors in their hands and fingers; they were designed to inflict careful, specific pain, to know exactly how much pressure to apply to organic flesh and bone. The designers had, of course, not known that this sensitivity could also create layers of pleasure feedback when a KX droid experienced warmth, and softness, and affection.

"Cassian," K-2 said, but trailed off as Cassian kissed a third finger, this time opening his mouth slightly, sliding the tip onto his tongue. The taste of metal and trace of oil should probably not have sent heat radiating through Cassian, but he'd given up on understanding this about himself. Instead he focused on K-2's fingers, sweeping his tongue along the length of one, enjoying how his fans kicked up and his vocabulator buzzed. 

"I don't know if this counts as kissing," the droid said, his voice a little staticky.

Cassian hummed, turning K-2's hand so he could suck lightly at the tip of his thumb, kiss down the length to his palm. "I think it does." The metal was warm and damp from his breath, and as he cradled K-2's palm against his mouth the droid caressed his cheek with his long fingers. "Feels like kissing to me." 

There was a strange elegance to K-2, for all the practicality of his design, and it was most apparent in his hands: a square, inflexible, functional palm, tapering into slender, nimble fingers. Fingers that could manipulate the most delicate of tools but also rip open a metal door. Fingers that could stroke so soothingly through Cassian's hair but also throw Stormtroopers bodily at a wall. All of his dangerous strength was present in his hands, but as Cassian slid two long fingers into his mouth he just said, "Cassian, Cassian…", his other hand spread across his back, firm but gentle all at once.

When Cassian pulled away, his breathing rough, his heart going very fast, K-2 made a disappointed noise. He trailed his warm, damp fingertips down Cassian's cheek, then traced over his lips. "None of my databanks suggest that that was kissing," he said. "Perhaps I should update them."

Cassian grinned, and kissed K-2 again. "I think that would be a great idea."

* * *

**=3**

Cassian managed to hold onto his anger just long enough to get back to his quarters. He could feel it like heat under his skin, filling him up until it threatened to explode out of him like a damn supernova. It was almost a relief to slam the door of his quarters and finally be able to round on K-2SO.

“You are fucking _unbelievable_.” 

K-2 had known he was angry, of course. Even if Cassian hadn’t been slamming doors and snarling, the droid would have deduced his mood from the exact tightness of his forehead. And yet he was clearly surprised by the venom in Cassian’s voice, visibly leaning back from him. 

“I am not the one who foolishly allowed himself to be captured.” Kay drew himself up to his full height as he spoke, so the dome of his head nearly brushed the ceiling. His tone only wound Cassian up further, and he advanced on the droid.

“I had it under control. You nearly blew our damn cover, Kay.”

“Except our cover is intact. And my simulations predicted a sixty-eight percent—”

“I don’t care!” Cassian’s voice was shaking, his blood pulsing in his veins. “Yes, there was a chance that I wouldn’t escape, or that they’d torture me, or execute me. But d’you know what our chance of getting that intel was, as soon as you interfered? _Zero_ percent. Dammit, Kay!” He actually shoved at Kay’s chestplate, an entirely pointless move that did nothing to lessen his anger. He wanted the droid to react, but instead he just stood and watched Cassian’s rage.

“I calculated the chances of you successfully retrieving the data without further danger. The results were unacceptable.”

“That’s not your call to make. I gave you a direct kriffing order. When we’re in the field, you need to do what I tell you.”

Kay’s optics flashed. “I will not follow orders that require me to leave you in unnecessary danger.”

“That’s the job!” Cassian snapped. “That’s what we signed up for, Kay. All of us!”

“I didn’t,” Kay said, and his vocabulator was no longer steady. Instead it fizzed with static, splitting his voice into multiple tones. “My primary directive is to protect you. ‘The job’ is not to let you throw your life away for no reason, and I will not follow orders that tell me to do so.”

“Do you have any idea how many lives we could save, if we knew where that damn military base is?”

“Approximately twenty-seven million.”

“Exactly!” Cassian flung his hands up. “It’s worth the extra risk for that!”

“No it’s not!” Kay’s voice was so broken up that Cassian barely understood him. “I will follow any order you give me, Cassian, no matter how foolish, but I will not leave you to die. If you want a droid that will do that, you need to find another one.”

That set Cassian back on his heels, something cold tempering the very edge of his anger. “What are you saying?”

Kay stepped forward so they were standing inches apart. The droid seemed to take up the whole room. His fans were running hard, but Cassian could still feel the excess heat from his vents, and radiating from his plating. He grabbed Cassian’s upper arms, hard enough to hurt but nowhere near his full strength. Cassian felt suddenly very, very aware of how easily Kay could throw him across the room.

“Do not order me to leave you in unacceptable danger, Cassian.” Kay’s fingers dug into his arms and he pushed Cassian backwards until his back hit the wall. 

Cassian jerked his chin up, refusing to be daunted. “I’m not worth more than twenty-seven million people.”

Kay shoved Cassian harder against the wall, making his breath catch in his throat and his stomach tighten. The huge droid leaned down, so their faces were only inches apart. “And do not expect me to agree that you are worth so little. How _dare you?”_

He was trapped against the wall and couldn’t move his arms, but Cassian leaned up and pressed a furious kiss to Kay’s faceplate, colliding with him so hard that he cut his upper lip on his teeth. He tasted hot, coppery blood, but didn’t care.

Kay let go of his arms, and instead curled one huge hand around Cassian’s throat, pressing just enough that Cassian was vividly aware of the pressure. He pressed the fingertips of his other hand to Cassian’s lips. Cassian licked at them, mixing the taste of oil with blood, and Kay pressed two fingers into his mouth. Anger still pulsed through Cassian’s body, blood pounding under his skin, and _fuck_ he’d been half-hard since Kay had grabbed him and that situation was not improving. He groaned and swallowed around Kay’s fingers, sucking hard at them, catching his teeth on the metal, surrendering to the furious energy that had been crackling through his body.

Anger, it turned out, could lead to an excellent orgasm. Finally Cassian was slumped against Kay, panting, the soft skin of his throat tender, his fury reduced to a faint simmer. Kay’s hands were now firm against his back, holding him steady.

“I’m still angry with you,” Cassian muttered against his chestplate.

Kay swept one hand up and down his spine. “I understand.”

* * *

**=4**

“No, no, no. Come on Kay, don’t do this—”

Cassian’s hands were shaking as he got Kay’s chestplate open, and he forced himself to stop and breathe, pushing all his adrenaline down, down, down. He couldn’t afford to let his emotions get the better of him. He couldn’t fix Kay if he was panicking.

 _Kriff_ , he thought as he surveyed the extent of the damage. Inside Kay’s torso was a mess of wiring, sensors and circuitboards. The droid’s optics were dark, and he wasn’t responding to any of Cassian’s reboot commands. It was eerie seeing Kay so inert, his fans silent, his servomotors still, none of the reassuring mechanical noises that were the background noise to much of Cassian’s life. Fear clawed at his chest, his heart thundering in his ears as though to make up for the terrible silence.

He really needed a droidtech for this, but they were trapped in this tiny safehouse with a limited toolkit and no working comms. He couldn’t justify looking for a local tech, particularly if he didn’t know their loyalties. They couldn’t risk the Empire finding out that the rebellion had their own KX droid and besides, Kay hated strangers doing maintenance on him. But Cassian wasn’t that good at this. 

He’d have to try. That was the only thing for it. And if he couldn’t get Kay working, he’d… well. He’d figure something out. Find a way to get him back to the ship, and then the techs at Base One could patch him up no problem. Provided they had all the parts they needed, of course; so much of Kay’s hardware was proprietary Imperial design, utterly incompatible with most market-standard droid models. There was every chance that he was unfixable.

The thought was like a blaster bolt to the chest.

Cassian gritted his teeth and took another deep breath. Then he got to work.

Hours later his eyes were aching with tiredness. All of his fingertips were scorched. He’d sliced open the heel of one thumb with a particularly sharp bit of wire. His back felt as though it had seized up after spending so long crouched in this position. But Kay’s circuitry looked better now, every wire connected, all the damaged pins carefully mended or replaced. It was a patch-job, at best, but with any luck it would get Kay back to Base One and proper maintenance.

Cassian sealed up Kay’s access hatches and gently swept his palm over the front of his chassis. Usually the durasteel plating was faintly warm, thanks to the enormous processing power that gave Kay his sharp mind and waspish personality, but Kay had been shut down long enough for it to cool. Something seemed to squeeze at Cassian’s heart.

“Kay?” he tried, curling his fingers around the droid’s lax palm. “Kay, wake up.”

For a moment nothing happened, and Cassian wanted to hit something, but then he heard a soft whirring sound. Kay’s optics flickered and came on. 

“Kay?” Cassian tried again, tightening his grip on his hand. “You with me?”

The fans picked up further, and then Kay turned his head slightly. “I have run my startup command prompts and engaged systems,” he said. “I can conclude that you did something foolish, though I do not appear to have saved my latest memory files.”

Relief bubbled up from Cassian’s stomach. “You’re alright.”

Kay made a humming noise. “I will need to run a full scan, but I appear to be functional.” He sat up, and turned his head to look fully at Cassian. “Would you like a full appraisal of your own condition?”

“I think I’ll manage without.” 

“Are you sure? Because you have deteriorated thirty-seven percent since my last scan.”

A laugh rose in Cassian’s chest and fractured on its way from his lips. He let himself slump down beside Kay on the dusty safe house floor, leaning over to press his lips all over his faceplate. When Kay lifted his hand to brush Cassian’s hair from his forehead he kissed that too, his fingers and palm and knuckles, suddenly full of a desperate need to record as much of him as possible.

“Cassian? I am not complaining, you understand, but I am concerned.”

“Sorry.” Cassian didn’t stop, softening the kisses as he brushed them over Kay’s palm. “But when we get back to base, I need to learn a lot more about KX maintenance.”

* * *

**=5**

It didn’t take a genius to work out that the emergency meeting was going badly. No matter how fervent Jyn’s passion, no matter how much she stormed at them, Cassian knew that Alliance High Command would never permit them to fly to Scarif. 

He hadn’t known Jyn Erso for very long, and for most of their short acquaintance they had been at odds, but he still knew that she would not give this up. He wasn’t about to either; a chance to destroy the Death Star, however slim, was one they could not pass up. 

Cassian slipped out of the meeting, unnoticed, and began to make his way to the hangar. He didn’t have long. They would have to be ready as soon as things broke up.

He made it less than twenty feet before he heard Kay’s footsteps behind him. “Cassian?”

“I thought you were charging.”

“I was. I was also running analysis to decide our next course of action.” The droid caught up with him, shortening his strides to match Cassian's. “They will not agree with Jyn Erso.”

“No.”

Kay’s fans hummed. “But you do.”

“I…”

“Of course you do. I have run several simulations. There is a non-zero chance that we could retrieve the Death Star plans from Scarif.”

“Those don’t sound like great odds.”

“They are not. I’m glad that you recognise this.”

Cassian sighed. “You don’t think we should go.”

The hum of Kay’s fans picked up, and he tilted his head to look down at Cassian. “I didn’t say that. I don’t like our odds of success, but if we do nothing then it is certain that the Empire will use the Death Star on other inhabited worlds.”

“They don’t see it that way.”

“No. But you are planning to go anyway, if you must. So I will go as well.”

A strange, painful emotion welled under Cassian’s breastbone as he looked up at the droid. He let his hand drift enough that he could let his fingers brush at Kay’s wrist joint. 

“We need more people,” he said urgently. “We can’t go alone. Find Melshi, Tonc… Pao, perhaps. Anyone you think might join us. We don’t have long.”

Kay bobbed his head in a nod. “Yes.” 

The droid began to move away, only stopping when Cassian grabbed his hand. No one was paying any attention to them, so Cassian took the chance and pressed a brief kiss to Kay’s knuckles.

“Be quick,” he said urgently, and turned away before Kay could respond. 

He did not know, then, that he would never have a chance to kiss him again. Many hours later, millions of miles away, Kay slammed the blast door closed. Cassian screamed his name, ignoring Jyn as she tried to pull him away, until the blaster shots from the other side of the door swallowed his voice.

* * *

**=1**

“I’m sure it’ll work,” said Bodhi reassuringly, pushing his goggles up into his hair. “I’ve double-checked everything.”

Cassian could scarcely believe it. He pressed a button on his hover-chair to move closer to where the refurbished KX chassis was strung up, its chest plate open. Bodhi had had to do a lot of work on the chassis - one arm and half of one leg were a different colour, and there was some patchwork across the torso and skull plate - but he had promised that the internal components, sensors, and processors were all in good working order. Which was more than could be said for Cassian, really.

“Bodhi?” 

“Yeah?”

“Do you mind… I’d like to wake him up myself. Alone.”

“Oh!” Bodhi nodded, leaping to his feet. “Yeah, of course! I’ll - wait outside. Call me if something’s wrong.”

Cassian nodded. Bodhi fussed around for a few more moments, closing up the chest plate and packing up his tools. Cassian resisted the urge to reach out and touch the KX’s long fingers. He couldn’t bring himself to think of the droid as Kay. Not yet. 

When Bodhi left, shutting the workshop door behind him, Cassian had to take a few deep, steady breaths. His lungs felt too large for his chest all of a sudden. He reached up to press his hand to the smooth durasteel of the droid’s chest, ignoring the twinge of pain in his back as he stretched. “K-2SO. Kay. Wake up.”

The sound of Kay’s fans was the single most beautiful thing Cassian had ever heard. His breath caught in his throat, his heart suddenly two sizes too large. 

“Kay?” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse and shaking. 

The pale optics slowly brightened. The lenses clicked as they focused. The long fingers twitched. Then the head tilted down to him.

“Cassian?”

The vocabulator wasn’t an exact match to the old one. The pitch was slightly different, and the words fractured unusually, but the _tone_ was pure K-2SO. 

Everything that Cassian wanted to say seemed to swell inside him, crowding in his throat and behind his tongue, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. His eyes blurred, and he grasped desperately for Kay’s hand.

 _“Cassian.”_ K-2 unplugged himself from the charging dock, moving rather more stiffly in the new body. Did he have all his movement subroutines? Would he need to rebuild them? Cassian struggled to pull in a new breath, his hands shaking, his fingers tingling horribly. Hot, sickly shame rose up in his stomach; why did he feel so panicky? It had _worked_. When Kay knelt down in front of his hover-chair, knees clanging, Cassian had to resist the urge to look away from him.

“Kay,” he managed to say. “I - you - you’re here.”

“Apparently so.” K-2 took Cassian’s hands in his own, the long durasteel fingers cool and gentle and beautifully familiar. Cassian stared at them through blurred eyes. “I can deduce that my old chassis was destroyed. How long ago?”

“About - about three standard months. Maybe four.”

“Your accuracy astonishes me.”

A rather shaky laugh broke out of Cassian. “Don’t blame me. I was in bacta for weeks.”

Kay’s fingers squeezed Cassian’s hands. “You were reckless, I assume.”

He struggled to pull in a full breath.

“Of course. Though not as reckless as _you_.” 

“I find that very hard to believe,” Kay said, though he did not reach the end of his sentence before Cassian had thrown his arms around his neck, half-falling out of his hover-chair. His back screamed at him, but he ignored it. Kay caught him up in his long, mismatched arms, and Cassian pressed his face to the smooth curve of Kay’s shoulder, willing himself not to cry.

“I kept thinking,” he said, his voice ragged, “about that last day on base. About the last time I kissed you, as though it meant nothing.”

Kay’s fingers stroked through Cassian’s hair, and he heard his fans whir loudly. “That doesn’t matter,” he said firmly. “Cassian, in my indices I have—” a brief pause— “6,712 memory files of times we have kissed. I promise you that not one of them meant nothing.”

“But—”

“And now I have been restored. You have labelled that moment as our last kiss, but that is imprecise.”

Cassian pulled away a little so he could look at Kay properly. His faceplate was the same, though the scuff marks were unfamiliar, and the optical glow was dimmer than before. “That’s true,” he allowed.

“Of course it is.” Kay moved his fingers from Cassian’s hair to his face, and Cassian knew he would be calculating exactly how much weight he had lost, and exactly how long it had been since he’d washed properly. His chest ached with a deep, swelling tenderness. “And even if we categorise it as the last kiss for my old chassis, that means that this can be the first kiss for this one.”

Cool fingertips touched Cassian’s lower lip, lightly tracing the shape of it, and Cassian couldn’t stop his mouth falling open. Kay slid one finger past his lips onto his tongue, and the familiar taste of metal and oil was magnificent. Cassian seized Kay’s hand in both of his and kissed him like a starving man, kissed his fingers, his palm, along the seam of his wrist and the joints of his knuckles. Kay’s new vocabulator crackled slightly, and when he said Cassian’s name it fractured into several new tones.

Cassian wished he could spend hours like this, kissing Kay and re-learning him, but soon he was shaking and the pain in his back had become unbearable. Kay helped him back into the hover-chair, admonishing him for over-burdening himself. Cassian didn’t care; Kay could nag him for hours if he wanted, and Cassian wouldn’t complain at all.

“Kay.”

“Yes?”

Cassian caught his hand again and brushed a gentle, lingering kiss over his knuckles. “I think that was an even better first kiss.”

The new optics brightened a little and Cassian knew that Kay was smiling. “Yes,” he said. “That is an accurate assessment.


End file.
